ODAN

Town/village/community/city

The suffix on ODAN will determine whether it's singular or plural.

Odan                        Town

Odanek                    About town

Kcheodan                 City

Neshnabé odan         Indian village

Odanké (sing.)          Going to town

Odanké men (pl.)     Going to town

 

Examples:

Nwi odanké                I am going to town.

Ngi odanké                I went to town.

Nde odanké              I am on my way to town.

Nwi odankémen        We are going to town.

Ngi odankémen        We went to town.

Nde odankémen       We are on our way to town.

 

Some interesting notes:

Nde          present tense

Nwi          future tense

Ngi          past tense

Nge         immediate future

 

Nde odanké                 I am on my way to town.

Nwi odanké                 I'm going to go to town.

Ngi odanké                  I went to town.

Nge odanké                 I will go to town.

Nde odankémen          We're on our way to town.

Nwi odankémen         We're going to go to town.

Ngi odankémen          We went to town.

Nge odankémen        We will go to town.

 

Now we shall add WABEK (tomorrow) and WNAGO (yesterday) to the mixture of sentences/phrases.

(Nde is present tense so we don't need to use it.)

Wabek nwi odanké                     Tomorrow we are going to town.

It could also be NWI ODANKÉ WABEK and still be grammatically correct.

In place of WABEK you could use a day of the week such as NGOT GISHGEK

or some future hour; NSWÉDBEGENÉK.

NGOTGISHGEK NWI ODANKÉ                On Monday, I am going to town.

NSWÉDBEGENÉK NWI ODANKÉ            At 3:00 o'clock I am going to town.

 

PLURAL:

WABEK NWI ODANKÉMEN                     Tomorrow we're going to town.

NGOT GISHGEK NWI ODANKÉMEN         On Monday, we're going to town.

NSWÉDBEGENÉK NWI ODANKÉMEN     At three o'clock we're going to town.

 

Days of the Week:

Nemé'gishek                            Sunday/go to church day.

Ngot gishek                             Monday/1st day of the week.

Nish gishek                             2nd day of the week.

Abto gishek                             Wednesday/half of the week.

Nyéw gishek                          Thursday/4th day of the week.

Nyano gishek                           Friday/5th day of the week.

Odanké gishek                         Saturday/go to town day.

In this instance GISHEK means day.

 

The terms GISHGET and GISHGEK are used in the following manner:

For GISHGEK:

Égi nemé'gishgek ngi wabma                        I saw him/her this past Sunday.

Bama mine Nemé'gishgek ke wabmen           Later on Sunday I will see you again

For GISHGET:

Nish gishget ne ngom                                  Is it Tuesday today?

Wi nyéw gishget wabek                               It's going to be Thursday tomorrow?

 

If someone were to ask you what day it is, you would answer:

Nishgishget ngom!                                       It's Tuesday today!

Or just

NISHGISHGET                                            It's Tuesday!